Marketing

How Long Before My Marketing Works?

Over on the Duct Tape Marketing blog, John answers the question - "How long should it take for my marketing to work". You probably aren't going to like the answer, but you should read it anyway. As John states - "...marketing is not an event, it's a...

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Nice Example of a Free Report

This weekend, I received a nice marketing piece from Deloitte bundled with my copy of CFO magazine. It  was a booklet titled Breathing Lessons (How CFOs can thrive under pressure). This book does a very nice job of identifying their ideal customer - Chief Financial...

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Starting a Marketing Conversation

Over on the Duct Tape Marketing Blog, John has some good tips for professionals that avoid marketing because they are uncomfortable with tooting their own horn. As a CPA, I've had this uncomfortable feeling myself and seen it in others. The accountants I know feel the...

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Working On Your Business

Over on the Quick Books Community Briefing on Small Business Blog, Chloe DeVita has a post on one of my favorite small business subjects - Working IN your business versus ON your business. Chloe (Miss Enterprise - love that!) talks about the challenges of keeping your...

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Networking Tips

Over on Legal Ease, Allison Shields gives some great advice (Holiday Networking Tips, Networking for Shy People, and Networking: What do I say?) about networking. I have two other tips that I have picked up along the way that I would like to add. The first is to...

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Bigger Or Better?

Catching up on my reading, I've noticed more people talking about the idea that bigger (in terms of market share) is not necessarily better. David Maister has an excellent post on his blog about the  pursuit of growth for the sake of growth in professional...

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Follow Your Mother’s (marketing) Advice

As I was looking through a package of advertisements from a chamber of commerce, I was reminded of the saying "actions speak louder than words". I don't know about you, but I was lucky enough to receive this advice 3 or 10 million times while growing up, so...

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Automate Your Lead Qualification

Last week I spoke about the importance of the importance of educating your referral sources as well as your prospects. In today's Best-of Weekly, Marketing Sherpa has a case study (Open access until Oct. 29th) about a couple of companies who use automated e-mail...

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Arm Your Volunteer Sales Force

Not getting the right kind of referrals is a common frustration for small business owners. In order to get the kind of referrals you want, you have to take the time to teach your referral sources how to spot your ideal prospect. Even though people love to give...

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Strategy before Tactics

Yesterday, I saw what I thought was a good example of working with a strategic partner. I say “thought”, because on further review, it appears that the tactic of teaming with a strategic partner is not supported by any underlying marketing strategy. As I was leaving...

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